We’ve been hard at work on the bacon project for a few months now. Next up: Bacon sausage. We cured an 11.20 lb pork belly for two weeks, next step is to grind it and stuff it in natural casings.

We’re certain this has been done before but have never actually sampled it ourselves.

Pictured is pork shoulder cut into strips alongside pure pork fat for a separate sausage project. One thing we noticed when we started making scratch sausage was our fat content was inevitably too low.

We’re now running a 60/40 lean to fat ratio. Also, we’ve quadrupled our salt content. The meat “drinks” the salt is how we’ve come to describe what happens during the process.

Another important note is that copious use of dried cayenne chile is important. The bright, hot chile flavor really cuts through the luscious fat to make a very compatible duo.